


Bruises

by somanyfeelings



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Soulmate AU, tbh mostly a lena character study because i l o v e h e r, tw: minor self harm, where every injury your soulmate receives appears on your skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 05:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8784952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somanyfeelings/pseuds/somanyfeelings
Summary: "It makes sense in a way you never thought all of this would: she was not born here. She is not from here. Fire and steel will not break her skin, but they clearly mar yours."
or: every bruise, bite, and scratch you get appears on the skin of your soulmate; and while supergirl may not bruise, lena luthor does.





	1. Chapter 1

  
~~i.~~

You have never gotten a mark. 

Rare doesn’t begin to describe it, you know, though that is what you tell yourself. You think of it as rare because the alternatives—the _they don’t exist_ thoughts and the _what if they’re dead?_ musings—hurt more than bit of falsified probability could ever.

Lex notices before your parents do because he sees you, actually looks at you, and it’s a joke to him in the same way it is a curse to you. You are thirteen the first time you grab a book off of your bookshelf and hit it into your arm repeatedly until blood pools beneath your skin. _There,_ you say the next day. _Look._

The lie stings more than the bruise does.

~~ii.~~

Lex woke with a black eye one day during high school and had never been prouder, and you remember this clearly during his trial, when manic exhaustion rims his eyes with the same blue-black hue.

But whereas it had once been the promise of something better yet to come, it is now a different kind of promise. One borne from hatred, not from love, and your unscarred skin feels like it is burning; why him? Why him?

_(Why not me?)_

~~iii.~~

_Rare_ sounds fake to you now, after Lex, after everything. So you switch to what you begin to consider more rational alternatives: not everyone has a soulmate. Out of everyone, why would you deserve one? You’re a _Luthor,_ after all.

You move to National City, and it is warmer than Metropolis, and you can no longer coat your forearms in long sleeves and tuck the edges into your palms and hide yourself the way you used to. So you wear your smooth skin and hardened gaze with pride, and it feels all the world like the power you have never had.

~~iv.~~

You wake to arms littered with bruises, and you lose count after finding fourteen, though many blend together in a tapestry of painless stains. Well, you think. That’s certainly one way to make an entrance. 

~~v.~~

The marks fade and new ones replace them, and you cannot help but feel like the universe is making up for lost time. But confusion is freeing when it is replaces brokenness and you do not care one bit that it is only now, now at age 26, that you are getting the marks.

~~vi.~~

But despite everything, you are a scientist, and whatever blood relation to the Luthors you lack, you make up for in shared curiosity about the world.

(Curiosity that had turned Lex mad, you know, but his actions were never tinged with the same fear yours have always been. You will not become him, if only because of the nightmares that plague you still.)

You need to know who it is, who can get no injuries for 26 years and then suddenly, shockingly, receive hundreds.

~~vii.~~

Supergirl fights some new alien, all sallow scales and long teeth, on live television, and you watch as it throws a chunk of concrete directly into her left shoulder. She falls back but remains unhurt, but you slide down the neckline of your shirt anyway, on a hunch, on an instinct.

The skin around your collarbone is already mottled purple, and your only reaction is to drop your still-full glass onto your thigh. It hits hard, and you rub the spot of impact, already prepared for another bruise—this time of your own doing.

It should be freeing. It should be amazing; you should be giddy with the realization that she’s here, that it’s okay. Instead you turn off the television, stare at yourself in the black mirror before you and see the bags under your eyes, and all your mind can picture is Lex. Your eyes sting with tears, and your thigh aches, and you somehow end up in bed, pretending you’ll be able to sleep.

Supergirl and a Luthor. 

Of course it isn’t fair.

~~viii.~~

You have seen Clark Kent, but you do not recognize the woman who steps in behind him. 

What you do know is this: as they leave, you stand to wish them good luck and barely hear her mutter something about “a bruise on my thigh, but I don’t bruise, Clark” as they walk away.

~~ix.~~

One interview turns into two, three, and soon you are giving her access to your office before you can think about this enough to decide otherwise.

You have figured it out by now, figured out that glasses and a practiced air of awkwardness—awkwardness that is a touch too real to be entirely faked, you know—hide the arms that have lifted planes, eyes that have melted metal. 

And there is a certain allure to it, to the idea of her being so unflinchingly good when you still cannot stop yourself from thinking of your future as inevitably evil. But that is a draw you can handle, for you have always been pulled toward the light (not like him, not like him).

What scares you is the way she smiles too easily and laughs so willingly, and how you feel yourself doing the same in a way you haven’t since Lex became someone you didn’t know anymore. The connection theoretically extends only to physical marks, but every time she sighs, you do the same, and that is entirely on you—you and her and the way she’s looking at you right now and the way you’re looking back.

You should have never let her in here. You should have sought her out sooner. Trust fits you poorly, but you have never wanted anything more.

~~x.~~

She steps into your office for the third time in a week and sheepishly holds up her right hand, baring an angry red line. The same one on your own hand, the result of a stray piece of broken glass.

It makes sense in a way you never thought all of this would: she was not born here. She is not from here. Fire and steel will not break her skin, but they clearly mar yours.

But she is meant to be here, you think, just as you were meant to be here. And despite everything—your name, her name—you start to think that maybe here is a lot smaller than Earth, than National City. 

Maybe it’s here, here, here with her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: this is going to be one chapter  
> me, two days later: here's another chapter
> 
> Thanks for the wonderful feedback, and I hope you enjoy!

~~i. _  
_ ~~

It’s supposed to be easy now.

Or at least that’s what you thought—you, the hopeless romantic the Luthors could never tame. They tried, of course; oh, they certainly tried, but callouses coated your heart after the first years of insults and from then on, nothing they said cut deep enough to bleed.

(What they didn’t say stings like the remains of a poorly healed wound, the absence of the _I love you_ ’s and _it’s okay_ ’s that you longed for still aching despite your need to claim otherwise.)

Finding them, finding a soulmate—finding _her_ , finding _your_ soulmate—was supposed to make everything click and be okay, and what does that word even mean if not this? This has always been your baseline, the thing for which all _it’ll be okay_ 's were measured against. This has been your anchor, your lifeline, your chance: someday, somewhere, somehow—— It’ll be okay.

Yet nothing feels different, and you wonder if this has been okay all along, if this is what _I’m okay_ is supposed to mean, if you have ever—will ever—be better than that desperate, hopeless okay.

 ~~~~  
~~ii.~~

If you try hard enough, you can forget the fear. It isn’t simple (what ever is?), but it works occasionally, in those moments where she’s curled up beside you with her feet tucked under tired legs, and her head has fallen to your shoulder and found a home there, and if you crane your neck a bit you can just barely make out her looking up at you and smiling like it’s the easiest thing in the world to do.

(It is, but only in these moments.)

Whatever movie, TV you have turned on under the pretense of entertainment is forgotten the moment she curls her fingers through yours and scrapes lightly against the back of one knuckle with her thumbnail, and you both know that if she scratched a bit harder, dug a big deeper, the same red trail would track down her knuckle as well.

  
~~iii.~~

She knows you’re scared.

It’s part of you at this point, part of you after the years of hiding it with squared shoulders, deep breaths, narrowed eyes, but she can hear the thump of your too-fast heartbeat, feel the flush of your cheeks, and there is no way for you to hide.

She doesn’t say anything (thank you, you don’t say back, but she recognizes it just as she does the fear). But when she gets back in the middle of the night with a smudge of grease across her forearm and you wake the next morning with seven off-blue marks dull against the pallor of your chest she knows enough to whisper the promises you need to hear.

_I’ll be fine. I’ll be safe. I love you._

   
~~~~~~iv.~~

Sometimes when she is gone you play a game, count the number of bruises to appear on your skin versus the number of minutes she is away, and the calculation of the ratio is instant. You do not know which is worse: more time, or more near misses.

It’s not much of a game.

It’s not a game at all.

You clench your fists so tightly that your nails cut into the palms of your hands, and you know she bears the same half moons of worry on her own palms, wherever she is.

   
~~~~~~v.~~

You are the only one left. You are not sure whether it hurts more or less than you expected it to.

Your days are no less booked than they ever have been, and this, this job, this persona, is easy. This is what you were trained for and you hate it because of that, but you are too good to ever think for a moment of doing anything else.

(You are not sure if you are good at the job or simply _good_ , though you hope for the latter a little more every night.)

 ~~~~  
~~vi.~~

God, you love her.

~~  
vii. _  
_~~

You think about years past sometimes, when the fences you have erected are chipped down by time, alcohol, love, and it always comes with that same streak of panic.

You were never enough for them, and your mother would look above you rather than at you, up at where your eyes would be if you were older, smarter, more able to understand. And Lex, well—

Maybe, you would think, maybe this pain wasn’t all your own. And you knew it was wrong, it was cruel, even, to wish some of this pain on your soulmate. And you knew it wasn’t possible, for only physical wounds were shared.

But those thoughts in the black of night soothed you, healed you. Maybe it wasn’t all yours to bear, you hoped. Maybe it wasn’t all yours.

  ~~~~  
~~viii.~~

People trust you now. You know it’s partially her doing—her, wearing that cape and that smile and when she says to trust someone, you do, of course you do. Part of you—maybe even most of you, for nurture is hard to shake—thinks that this is most of it, most of why you fit in here as well as you do.

But the smaller part of you, the fragment of your heart that got you onto the plane to National City in the first place and away from them, from there, knows it’s you. You, and your refusal to continue production on the alien detection device. You, and your promise to shut down every research project Lex began. You, and the fact that you have nobody from that life left so how can you _possibly_ be one of them?

It is uncomfortable. You are not used to it. Your instinct still screams strong to hold your head a bit too high, to narrow your eyes a touch too much, to protect yourself.

 ~~~~  
~~ix.~~

She is behind you, one hand twirled through your hair, when the sirens sound. And for the first time, the familiar shock does not pierce through you.

For the first time, she is not the one to apologize, to step away; instead, you do. You stand and look at her, and you know that she cannot change this part of her, this need to help.

(It is what made you fall in love with her—Kara first, Supergirl later—in the first place. She helped you, after all, and how could you ever, ever resent that?)

She pauses as she always does, but the words that fall from her lips are a thank you, not an apology. You know she has to go. You didn’t used to know you wanted her to.

  ~~~~  
~~x.~~ _ ~~  
~~_

You wake up first. She gets in late from a robbery, a fight, something, and is curled amongst the blankets peacefully, for once.

You brush her hair from where it has fallen astray over her face and leave her four english muffins and plenty of jam when you leave for work. She texts you a thank you; she always does.

She is home earlier with more bags of take-out than you care to count and this is right, this is easy.

  ~~~~  
~~xi.~~

You’re still scared every time she leaves. Every time your last name is streaked across a headline. Every time you wake.

But you know she is scared too, every time she goes to fight, every time she is assigned an article, every time you miss too many calls. You see it when she traces apologies over the mottled skin of your arms every time she returns, and it is soothing, somehow, to know that this feeling is even more than something human.

 

~~  
xii.  
~~

It’s during a meeting when you think it. She isn’t there—she is above you somewhere, arcing through the clouds. But the investors are watching you with an unexpected respect and your words sound all the world like confidence; and you know that maybe things don’t fit perfectly, maybe she leaves too suddenly and you fear too quickly and that tinge of unshakeable self-hatred rubs wrong against her rashness. But maybe things will be okay.

 _No_ , not maybe. They already are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think & find me at ageekmonkey on tumblr!

**Author's Note:**

> Things I am Trash™ for: supercorp, second person, soulmates AUs.
> 
> So here we are.


End file.
